A headlong leap into music, history, and composing

Tag Archives: discovery

RISM has reported1 that a new aria from an opera by Georg Philipp Telemann has been found in Braunschweig, Germany. The aria, “Mein Herz is viel zu schwach, Euch zu verlassen” [My heart is far too weak to leave you], is believed to be from the opera Die königliche Schäferin Margenis [The Royal Shepherdess Margenis].

The manuscript is written in German organ tablature notation, but a modern transcription has been published in the German-language music journal Concerto.2

The Strad reports that a previously unknown work for viola and piano written by Dmitri Shostakovich has been found in Moscow. The discovery was announced on the composer’s birthday (25 September).

The piece is titled Impromptu Op. 33 (Shostakovich later assigned the number to another work). It was found among the papers of violist Vadim Borisovsky of the Beethoven Quartet. It is believed it was written for violist Alexander Ryvkin of the Glazunov Quartet. The duet was written, apparently in one sitting, in 1931.

We do not yet know what this newly-found work sounds like. Shostakovich wrote one other work for the viola, the Viola Sonata (his last composition), which was written in 1975. You can listen to it here.

It is stated that the newly found daguerreotype was created in the studio of Louis-Auguste Bisson in or around 1847 (Chopin died in 1849). The photograph was compared against other known photographs and portraits to evaluate its authenticity, and the circumstantial evidence appears to support the claim. This would be only the third known photograph of Chopin. Another was taken by Bisson in 1849 (below, left), and this is the most widely known image. Another image, poorer in quality, dates from around 1847 (below, right). Questions have been raised about another photograph, a post-mortem photograph that is said to depict Chopin.

Like this:

Stravinsky’s Funeral Song, long thought to be lost, has been found, and will be performed for the first time in 107 years on December 2, 2016.

Stravinsky wrote Funeral Song in 1908 as a tribute after the death of his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. It was last performed in January 1909, with Felix Blumenfeld conducting. The piece was never published, and was considered lost in the chaos and upheaval of the Russian Revolution. Stravinsky said that Funeral Song was the best thing he had ever written before The Firebird, but, unfortunately, he could not remember the music to reconstruct it. In memoirs written in 1935 Stravinsky said,

I no longer remember the music, but I recall very well my idea for the work. It was like a procession of all the soli instruments of the orchestra, coming in turns to each leave a melody in the form of a wreath on the master’s tomb, all the while with a low background of murmuring tremolos, like the vibrations of bass voices singing in a choir.

Various attempts had been made over the years to find the piece, all in vain. However, during building repairs at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, after removing pianos and tons of scores from a music library, a small, previously inaccessible storage area was uncovered. Chillingly, the music was supposed to have been destroyed. Luckily, librarian Irina Sidorenko called musicologist Natalia Braginskaya, a Stravinsky expert who had been seeking the work at the conservatory, to tell her Funeral Song had been found.

In all, 58 orchestral parts of the 106-measure piece, which is in A minor and marked with a tempo of Largo assai, were found. Braginskaya and a team of experts at the conservatory worked to reconstruct the full orchestral score of the piece, which will be published by Boosey and Hawkes. It is stated that the piece is marked by a romantic style uncharacteristic of later Stravinsky works, although some of the harmony and instrumentation is reminiscent of The Firebird.

You see, they weren’t
In Vivaldi’s handwriting,
But the style was his.

Who knows what wonders
Remain to be found in some
Library archive?

The earliest work of Antonio Vivaldi has been found in a library in Dresden, Germany. Co-discoverer Javier Lupiáñez was examining 72 anonymous sonatas in the library’s archives when he realized that one of them might have been written by Vivaldi. A watermark revealed that the manuscript of RV 820 (Trio sonata for violin and cello in G Major) came from Ansbach, where one of Vivaldi’s teachers, Giuseppe Torelli, lived. Researchers had not recognized it previously as being Vivaldi’s because it was written out by Johann Georg Pisendel, a friend of Vivaldi’s. It is believed the work dates to around 1700, when Vivaldi was only 23. A violin solo, in particular, had a distinctive Vivaldi technique unknown in the works of Corelli. Lupiáñez is recognized as a co-discoverer of RV 820 with Federico Maria Sardelli.1 Sardelli discovered the work when he “stumbled by chance across one of the many anonymous manuscripts that his wife Bettina, also a musician, had gathered across Europe” and recognized the handwriting.2 You can see RV 820 here.

Javier Lupiáñez is acknowledged as the sole discoverer of RV 205/2 (Sonata for violin in A Major).1

The co-discoverer of RV 820, Federico Maria Sardelli, who is in charge of updating the RV catalog of Vivaldi’s works, believes there is still much to be found. “There was a complete Vivaldi silence for almost 200 years, which is very frustrating and very exciting at the same time because there is constantly a possibility of making new discoveries…Vivaldi’s body of work is like an erupting volcano.”2

Leaf from the Cambridge Songs manuscript containing The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius with neumes

Barrett partnered with Benjamin Bagby of the group Sequentia to test whether interpretations of the neumes were feasible given the limitations imposed by instruments of the time, as well as by human hands and voice.

Over the weekend, Thomas Fritzsch, who rediscovered the lost Telemann solo viola da gamba fantasias, performed them at the annual Telemann conference in Magdeburg, Germany. The score and CDs were available for sale at the performance.

The publisher’s page has a link for CDs, but it brings you back to the page for the score. I’m guessing CDs will be available there at some point. I couldn’t find physical CDs elsewhere at this time. [Update: several recordings have since been made; here’s one place you can find them]